How Not To Be "That Guy"

[coraa]

I was going to shut up about this now, but this is too useful and true and excellent not to share.

From synecdochic, Don't Be That Guy. Where That Guy is the guy who sets off women's creepdar (and often rightly so). How to recognize what behaviors you might have that make you look like an entitled creep, how not to do them, and how to back up women who are encountering them without making yourself creepy in the process. Covers such topics as I-deserve-your-attention entitlement, but-I'm-a-feminist-so-I-deserve-some-tail-too entitlement, why "no" doesn't mean "maybe" and why you might think it does, why you may want to avoid being a Man Who Explains Things, why it's okay to fuck up but not okay to get dismissive, and why "men can be raped, too!" is a non-starter of an argument.

Yeah, these aren't creepiness flags that Every Woman Everywhere find creepy -- but I can tell you that they're dead-on accurate for me, at least, and I know I'm not the only one.

Also, as a follow-up to the Back Each Other Up pledge, via shaysdays, a post on how women can back up or 'rescue' other women without putting themselves in a dangerous situation (as might happen if they confront a creeptastic guy directly), and also on how to spot body language that means 'I do not want to talk to this guy or even look at him but I'm too polite and/or frightened to actually say so or walk away.'

Most of the how-to-back-up tips there are more appropriate for women rescuing women (the body-language tips are generally applicable) -- it's trickier for men to do so, because so many women (including me!) have had one of two bad experiences. Either a guy tries to 'rescue' me in a way that's actually alpha male posturing, faux-chivalric 'I shall rescue you and then surely you will bestow a kiss upon your knight' stuff, which is ew. You shouldn't try to get a woman away from a creep so that she'll pay attention to you instead. OR: guys leaping straight into trying to Solve The Problem and chase the other guy away before they even determine that I want to be rescued -- at which point it gets directly into I Know Better Than You, Helpless Female territory. synechdochic's suggestion for how a guy can back up a woman is brilliant: he should join the conversation and start talking to the guy, thus providing a distraction and allowing the woman to more easily make her excuses and escape. That way, if she was enjoying talking to potential-creep, she can continue, and if she wants to get away, she can.

At some point I'm going to pull together my post on Hugs Of Inappropriate Length (kind of like the more gropetastic cousin to Rodents Of Unusual Size), but not today. Today I'm making earrings and writing a story.

Comments

[marvinalone.livejournal.com]

Well, I read the whole post as a guide on how to not be a jerk. I can see though how you could read it as "How to be a guy I'd want to date". However, once you're not talking about dating, the situation isn't the kind of buyers market that you describe in your analogy, and this is where I got your intentions confused.

[madduckdes.livejournal.com]

I think that, in general, one of the unfortunate things about gender relations is that for so long guys have (mostly) only needed to care about women's opinions in order to get the women to date (or screw). I think that you're right that dating often feels like a buyer's market (where women are the buyers) to guys - particularly "nice guys," whereas other environments do not have that buyer's market sense because women don't hold the power. I think that in my original analogy, for things other than sex, lots of guys go with response 3, "Don't have time to listen to these complaints."

"I want to work either fewer hours per day or fewer days per week immediately after having a baby." "That's not how the world works, dear."

"I feel uncomfortable when in meetings the person who shouts the loudest is perceived as having the best idea." "Well, if you want to get anywhere, you're just going to have to learn to be more assertive."

"My best friend narrowly escaped sexual assault at a dance club, and so now I'm really anal about the buddy system when I go out with my female friends." "You're just paranoid. You should relax."

Definitely not a women's market for so many issues. Not all, but many. And change is so slow.

But I have faith that it will happen. More women will start opening their own businesses. Women will keep voting. Things will have to balance out someday.

Guys often have this weird idea that if they agree with the women around them, they've become whipped. And so some guys avoid seeing the women's side at all. I wish there were way to help guys feel like they have their own opinions while still embracing that the woman's ideas are equally valid. There are so many times where I'll see a guy shrug and say something like, "That's not important to me." And I want to tell him, yeah, but it's important to her. And she's important to you. So at least listen.

Continuing with the idea of women as buyers (and then thinking of "the male way" as a type of monopoly power), I'm not saying that I want things to shift so much that "the female way" gains monopsony power. I don't want guys to have to talk about their feelings during a job interview. I don't want the federal government to become all about social programs and forget about security. I just want the male assumptions to stop being the default right way.

... And if that means that I have to keep explaining myself over and over to the good guys (even if they're sometimes frustrating conversations, or even if it turns out that some of the good guys turn out to actually be asses), well, then I will usually take one for the team. Coraa mentioned below that at some point guys who won't listen have stopped being part of "The Good Guys." I think she's right. But I also try to draw my line pretty far. If men have been getting the signal for ages that their way is always right and they don't have to listen to the women, the process of men seeing the female perspective might require a buttload of patience.

Hmm. That all sounds very female. Maybe it will change quicker if I start shouting louder than the other people in the room. But then, would we have really gotten anywhere?